Oh, Thank Heaven It's 2011

Oh, Thank Heaven It's 2011
By Jed Babbin on 12.30.10 @ 6:09AM

2010 is finally over and it's high bloody time.

The second year of the Obama plague began with Obama signing the healthcare "reform" measure, which Joe Biden pronounced was a big effing deal. Heaven's sense of humor was demonstrated by the visitation on Washington of a second plague, not easily distinguished from the first. Halyomorpha halys, the brown stink bug, infested the area in biblical proportions.

The Wikis leaked all over us but President Obama told us it was rain falling on our heads. Barry says we're on the right track in Afghanistan but, as Jimmy McMillen told us, the rent is too damned high. Hamid Karzai just wants us to pay it in perpetuity, which appears to be the time in which the Iraqis will get their act together. Joe Biden had bad news for Karzai, though, saying we'll be out of there in 2014 come hell or high water. Which must be Joe's long-range forecast for the 2012 election.

The Rump Congress finally went home after slinging its last insults at our economy and our culture. And according to Gallup, 13 percent of Americans still think Congress is doing a very good job. Who are these people? They must be the ones the UN thought of when it proposed to appoint its first official ambassador to extraterrestrial beings. (If the House Repubs want to cut something out of the budget next year, how about starting with the $6 billion or so we pay the Turtle Bay crime family every year?)

It's not just that Barry, Nancy and Harry managed to stampede more nation-mangling legislation into law. It's not just that our national debt is such a large number -- $13,868,461,000,000 -- that it defies imagination and repayment.

It's the fact that for all the great work of the Tea Partyers, for all the votes cast and promises made, there's a lingering sense of dread.

Barry got shellacked in November, but before the varnish could dry the Senate RINOs handed Presidude Obama almost everything he wanted, including a tax deal that had so many liberal toys attached, you'd need a new car to pull it. One more powerful than the Chevy Volt, which gets at least 40 miles per billion dollars of taxpayer-funded subsidies.

The Chinese, helping us draw the economic noose ever more tightly around our necks, are also trying to stir-fry some of their neighbors into satellite states. China's military buildup now includes plans for an aircraft carrier or two. In that regard they match the Brits whose long-deck carriers may someday set sail. But the penurious Brits (rendered so by years of liberal government) can't afford to build planes to operate from their carriers. So they're thinking about a partnership with the French to take turns sailing and paying for carrier ops.

The ship will have to be christened HMS Fromage, and the alternating crews will choose between stilton and camembert. The Fromage had better have a reinforced bow because mother earth is cooling so quickly, we appear to be entering a new Ice Age.

2011 will not only be colder, but darker: the last U.S. factory making incandescent light bulbs closed in 2010. From now on, in between the moment you throw the switch and when the stupid spiral actually emits its dull light take time to thank a liberal. (When a bulb breaks, call the hazmat squad: the spirals contain mercury, which is nearly as hazardous to your health as Obamacare.)

Frozen Britain reported that the first week in December 2010 wasn't the coldest ever opening week of that month. That occurred in 1639 when the British East India Company was founding the city of Madras (thereby establishing a reliable supply of tasteful plaid shirts) and the birth of Sir Isaac Newton was three years off. It's a pity that Sir Isaac isn't around to dissect mathematically California's latest act of economic suicide.

Economic terminator Schwarzenegger hailed the enactment of California's version of the failed European cap-and-trade scam just in time for Governor Medfly's re-inauguration next month. Jerry Brown's new turn in Sacramento will be historic: he will be the first governor to oversee the outright bankruptcy of a U.S. state. A more fitting idea would be for California to join the economic leper colony called the "euro zone."

An unconfirmed report says that the reappearance of the cartoon character "Speedy Alka-Seltzer" that cheered the television ads of our youth was conceived in California solely for the relief of German PM Angela Merkel. Ms. Merkel will man up in 2011 to save the German economy, which will require busting up the euro zone. "Deutschmarks uber alles" does have a nice ring to it.

The comparisons between Barry and his international counterparts have been, well, unfortunate. Russian strongman Vlad Putin was filmed in an ultimate act of political incorrectness: shooting whales with a crossbow. Barry was dancing the Indian version of disco. Vlad was practicing judo throws on big guys. Barry was dishing with the girls on "The View." When asked about antigovernment protesters denied permission to demonstrate, Vlad said "You will be beaten upside the head with a truncheon. And that's it." Faced with the toughest question the media posed to him this year, Barry told the Viewettes "I've got to admit that I don't know who Snooki is."

If you wonder how the START treaty got to be so bad for us and so good for Russia, please re-read the preceding paragraph. I'd suggest that Barry man up, but I'd have equal success aiming that remark at Barney Frank.

Marines don't need to be told to man up, because they perfected the concept in 1775. Two Marine Commandants -- Gen. Jim Conway and his successor Gen. James Amos -- both stood fast against the repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law prohibiting homosexuals from serving openly in the military. But the hyperlibs and RINOs of Congress believed themselves better judges of the effect of DADT repeal.

The repeal may be a supersecret strategery to help win the Afghanistan war. Thanks to WikiLeaks, we know the sexual proclivities of many Pashtun men, who apparently embrace a liberal interpretation of Islam as well as each other.

Long will historians ponder why -- upon the repeal -- the first communication from the Senate Majority Leader was to a creature of unknown biology known as Lady Gaga. The only discernible connection is that Army Pfc. Bradley Manning -- accused of passing hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks -- reportedly copied them onto rewritable Lady Gaga music disks. Manning is enthusiastically gay, but we will refrain from speculation of any connection between or among him, Senator Reid and Lady Gaga.

The Kabuki troupe performing security theater at airports have yet to stop a would-be terrorist, but they have determined how Superman's x-ray vision benefits him when he isn't out fighting crime. Some of the TSA goons selected former "Baywatch" babe Donna D'Errico for personal naked x-ray screening and, according to the lady in question, she observed them chuckling furtively at what they saw.

I'm pretty sure that the TSA fondlers will not be able to touch a woman's padded bra and tell if it's padded with cotton or PETN, the explosive du jour among the bad guys. We have enough money to put TV's up in all the Wall Marts to show Big Sis warning us to say something if we see something, but not enough to train screeners to do it as the Israelis do. I'll say something: stop performing security rituals that don't make us safer, fire Janet Incompetano and train profiling screeners to keep the underwear bombers off my next flight.

Thanks to the greatness of the American people, voiced through the election by the Tea Party Movement, there is hope. As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke of his Dem colleagues at the end of the 111th Congress, "If they think it's bad now, wait till next year."

Now that's a promise that must be kept. Happy New Year.